


Despite the Warning Signs

by NatRoze



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Nonbinary Character, Oikawa and Kuroo being terrible enablers, Semi is also an enabler, Speaking of which Saeko is also an enabler, Trans Character, Underage Drinking, Well - Freeform, enemies to frenemies to dating, enemies to friends to, misuse of jello, not really friends, please don't try this in your own dorm rooms, there's smooching though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6914404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatRoze/pseuds/NatRoze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“War,” Suga says, quite cordially. “This means war.”</p><p>Or, the one where Tendou and Suga end up roommates in college and immediately engage each other in dorm room prank combat. Romantically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despite the Warning Signs

**Author's Note:**

> tons of thanks to betsy for beta-reading and pointing out my bad habit of run-on sentences. also to amber for test-driving my terrible ideas and being an enabler
> 
> anyway, this fic was born because a long, long time ago, back in like. a Long-Ass Time ago on the sugaships blog on tumblr, someone sent in a tensuga ask implying it was not possible to write slow burn tensuga  
> this is my response to that  
> i am proud to christen the tag with this
> 
> also, happy birthday to my wonderful son Tendou

 

College was supposed to be easy for Sugawara Koushi. He was supposed to go to class, study hard, get good grades and graduate with a job offer. He was supposed to make friends, try out for the volleyball team, make his parents proud.  He was supposed to share stories and commiserate about his homework over skype with Daichi and Kiyoko and Asahi. It was supposed to be so very easy.

It seems decidedly less easy when he arrives at his new dorm and discovers he shares a bathroom with someone. Nothing _impossible_ to deal with, it’s not terrible, certainly. The bathroom sits between their two rooms, with a door on each side that locks from within, so there isn’t even a chance of awkwardly walking in on each other showering unless one of them forgets to lock it. Suga makes himself a mental note to always check the locks. Whoever his dorm-mate is, they can make this work. He’s not an unpleasant person. He can share bathroom territory with someone just fine; he’s been doing so quite easily with his parents for the past eighteen years anyway.

Yeah, Suga is _quite_ easy to get along with. So, once he’s unpacked his bags, finished decorating his dorm room with volleyball posters and photos of his high school friends, and hung his Karasuno track jacket over the back of his desk chair, he crosses through the bathroom and knocks on the other door, ready to introduce himself.

“Just a sec!” yells a slightly familiar voice, and Suga hesitates. There’s a noise from the other room that sounds suspiciously like things falling, followed by a muffled “Fuck!” and then footsteps crossing the room.

The door opens, and standing on the other side is –

“Oh my god,” Suga mutters. This is not at all anything he could have imagined, not even in his most ridiculous worst-case-scenario anxious 3 a.m. ramblings over the phone to Daichi.

Tendou Satori stares down at him, six feet and one inch of _trouble_. Shiratorizawa’s ex-middle blocker is immediately recognizable, even though Suga hasn’t seen him since Nationals preliminaries. He’s got the same crazy red hair and the same crazy wide eyes. This is the first time Suga’s seen him out of uniform, and he’s not entirely surprised by the tie-dye board shorts. He _is_ surprised by the Evangelion t-shirt. Suga stares up at him, feeling just the slightest bit bitter about how much more pronounced their height difference is without a volleyball net between them. He watches Tendou’s face contort itself as he tries very hard not to laugh. Tendou doesn’t last long though - within seconds he’s doubled over and literally wheezing with laughter.

“Fuck me, this is the craziest coincidence,” gasps Tendou through his giggles.

“Oh my god,” Suga repeats, incredulously. He squeezes his eyes shut and pinches himself, but when he opens them there’s still a hyena-laughing mess of over-gelled red hair in front of him. After a moment, Tendou remembers to breathe, straightens up, and leans on the doorframe, still a little giddy. He fixes Suga with the same narrow-eyed smirk he wore across the court during the final match of preliminaries, and Suga feels his blood boil.

“No, this is great,” says Tendou, horridly excited. Suga’s eyes narrow. “The match was over too soon - I never got to watch you totally break!”

Suga nods decidedly to himself, and closes and locks the bathroom door.

 

 

“You don’t understand, Daichi,” Suga says on the phone at lunch, eight days later. Classes have begun, which means Suga is blessedly busy and out of the dorms for at least a handful of hours of the day - but that doesn’t change the dreadful reality of Tendou lurking in the back of his chemistry lecture. Despite them having seated themselves on opposite sides of the lecture hall on day one, he can _see_ Tendou moving a few seats closer to him every consecutive lecture, encroaching on him like the slow embrace of death. “He’s also in my psych lecture,” Suga tells Daichi, “and he sits in the row directly behind me.”

“So?”

“So I’m getting a little tired of the lewd comments about Freud, is all. He’s infuriating!” Beyond the teasing, obviously, and the fact that Tendou seems to have made it his mission in life to be a little shit to Suga, he’s not quite sure what it _is_ about Tendou that’s constantly catching him off-guard. But _something_ is. Maybe it’s his eyes. He seems to blink less than normal people - whenever Tendou looks at him with that crazy grin of his, it makes Suga squirm and his face heat up uncomfortably. “He’s a _menace._ ”

“You’re being overdramatic,” is what Daichi says to that. “He can’t be that bad, can he?”

“Tell that to his two in the morning one-man raves. And his habit of singing _really_ weird songs in the shower.” Suga stabs at his bad campus food rice bowl in irritation.

“You handled Noya and Tanaka’s training camp shower duets fine,” points out Daichi.

“Noya and Tanaka sang bad showtunes. This is like. One third anime theme songs, one third explicit rap, and the rest is death metal screams.”

“I think you just want to complain,” Daichi teases.

“You would too,” Suga intones grimly as he gets up from his lunch table. He shoulders his bag, tosses his takeout bowl, and heads out to class. “He’s constantly invading my personal space and it’s starting to _get_ to me.” What he doesn’t explain is that Tendou invading his personal space actually means Tendou throwing an arm over his shoulder as though they’re friends, and Tendou joining him in the dining hall at breakfast and eating his sausage links seductively, and Tendou draping himself over the back of Suga’s chair (and by proxy, Suga himself) while he’s trying to do homework.

“Okay, I _did_ tell you I’m living with Kuroo, right?” Daichi retaliates. “Which basically means I’m living with Bokuto, too. Who, by the way, in case you needed a reminder, are a dynamic duo from hell. I’ve completely given up on the concept of alone time.”

“I still say you dug yourself that grave,” Suga reminds him. Maybe, he considers, it’s the fact that Tendou is _taller_ than him - _why_ does he have to be tall? It isn’t fair. “I, on the other hand, did not sign up for this. I can’t shower after him, he uses _Axe Shampoo_ like an actual child, and the bathroom smells like it for hours after, and he keeps coming over to my room and sitting on my desk, and he leaves his manga everywhere, I found a copy of Shonen Jump _in the sink-_ ”          

“And _I’m_ still kinda pissed you turned on the sink without checking first and totally drenched my magazine,” says Tendou, far too close to Suga’s ear, warm breath ghosting over the side of his neck. Fortunately, Suga is quite proud of his ability to retain composure under duress, and he doesn’t startle or make any embarrassing noises. He does, however, sigh emphatically.

“Suga?” Daichi says over the phone. “You alright?”

“I will have to call you back,” Suga says tightly. He hangs up before sliding his eyes over to Tendou, who’s got his hands in his pockets, walking briskly beside Suga as he crosses campus toward their chem lecture. “How can I help you, Tendou-kun?”

“I just caught you talking shit about me to your long-distance sweetheart and you want to know how you can _help_ me.” Tendou doesn’t exactly _sound_ annoyed, but he just keeps grinning at Suga like he has something to prove.

“I was just wondering what you want with me, is all,” says Suga, who, by a week into his first semester of college, is beginning to want his personal space back, thank you.

“We could’ve been walking to class together this _whole time_ ,” Tendou practically sings, ignoring the question. Suga shrugs and smiles noncommittally. In his head, he remaps himself a different route to the chemistry building.

“Is that so,” says Suga dismissively. Tendou swings an arm cordially over Suga’s shoulder, and Suga flinches, just a bit. There’s nothing _wrong_ with Tendou’s action, technically speaking. It’s _friendly_. There’s just nothing _normal_ about it either, because it’s _overly_ friendly and while Suga is a perfectly friendly person, it takes him a while to get up to the level of casual-touch-first-name-basis kind of friendship. He and Daichi weren’t this close the first week they knew each other; it’d taken them _months_ to become the kind of close that made all of Karasuno think they were dating. Tendou seems to have already been at that point from day one, leaning over the back of Suga’s desk chair while he’s working and calling him _Koushi-kun_ and-

“Are you _trying_ to get a rise out of me?” Suga wonders aloud suddenly, thinking back to Karasuno’s match against Shiratorizawa, when Tendou had all but announced that he was actively trying to break Suga’s spirit.

“Oh, thank _god_ , you finally caught on.” Tendou claps him on the shoulder with a grin. The arm around Suga’s shoulders tugs him closer and he stumbles into Tendou’s side.

 _I never did anything to deserve this._ Suga thinks, pulling away and entering the science building. Quite annoyed by now, he says, “Well, keep trying, ‘cause it’s not working. And stop leaving your socks on my floor, please.”

“Keep _trying_?” Tendou follows him down the hall and into their lecture hall. Suga sits, and Tendou sits immediately to the left of him, then props his long legs up on the back of the row in front of them. For a blessed full five minutes while the rest of the class files into the lecture hall, he manages to shut up. Suga revels in the quiet until Tendou turns to him with a grin sharp enough to send a chill down his spine. He says, “Is that a challenge?”

Suga suddenly wishes he’d gone to school in Tokyo with Daichi.

 

 

It takes Suga a few days to realize Tendou’s actually taken him up on this challenge. It’s not like Tendou stops being persistently in his space and leaving his things everywhere (although Suga irritatedly checks the sink for issues of Shounen Jump now, only to miss the one on the back of the toilet, which he accidentally knocks into the bowl). If anything, he gets increasingly more obnoxious as he tries to make Suga snap, going to such great lengths as to first start referring to Suga by stranger and stranger nicknames (Sugarlips being the most egregious one Suga hears before he puts on his headphones to tune Tendou out) and drinking straight out of the milk carton in Suga’s mini-fridge.

Suga, quite proud of himself for his resilience, doesn’t let Tendou get the better of him. Oh, sure, he locks himself in the quiet study rooms in the library and bitches to Daichi and Asahi over the phone. But Tendou has yet to _see_ him lose his tragically slipping composure, which means Suga is _winning_. Technically.

Unfortunately, on Thursday morning, things start to get a little bit weird. Suga wakes up when his phone alarm goes off, blearily rolls out of bed and dresses himself while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. In the bathroom, he brushes his teeth and washes his face and makes sure his hair isn’t doing anything too unruly. He gathers up his notebooks and laptop and whatever he needs for the day, slips on his shoes, and swings the door to his room wide open.

A horrifyingly loud wail blares through the air. Suga drops his backpack and, for a brief and adrenaline-racked moment, wonders if he’s under attack of some kind - it sounds like a movie air-raid siren.

Heart beating a mile a minute, he hoists his bag back up and staggers out the door. Duct-taped to the outside knob, he discovers, is an airhorn, which had run into the wall and sounded. And then, from the other side of Tendou’s dorm room door, Suga hears a very distinct cackle.

He un-tapes the air horn, plants it firmly upright in the entryway of his dorm room, and locks his door behind him. As he passes Tendou’s door, he purses his lips in irritation, but he doesn’t confront him. He’s got a class to get to and he can deal with this later when he’s not as immediately pissed off about it. And anyway, in retrospect, this isn’t actually the most obnoxious thing Tendou’s done. It’s just the strangest.

Suga doesn’t see Tendou again until later that day, when he runs into him on the way to chemistry again, despite having changed his route to get there.

“I bet you think you’re quite clever,” says Suga, as Tendou falls into step beside Suga, hands in his pockets and evil grin already in place.

“Just you wait, Koushi-kun.” Tendou smirks down at him. Suga smiles blithely back.

“Are you seriously planning on teasing and pranking me into losing my cool?” As soon as the words are out of his mouth,Suga is already dreading Tendou’s response. Actually, he heavily regrets ever telling Tendou to try harder to get a reaction out of him. Either there’s some previously unnoticed masochistic tendencies surfacing here, or Suga might need to get help.

Tendou doesn’t immediately reply to this, but as they near the main quad, he steps directly into Suga’s path, stopping him in the middle of the sidewalk. Suga frowns at him, confused and increasingly frustrated; when will Tendou get bored of attempting and failing to get a rise out of him? Tendou grins back, inhales deeply and yells, “Koushi-kun, why won’t you ever hold my hand in public? Is this really how you treat your boyfriend? Aren’t we together? You’re breaking my heart! ”

People stop. People _stare_. Some of them start to whisper as Tendou stands there, face contorted into a pout, while Suga fights the urge to gape incredulously at him. This has reached a whole new level. Being a pain in the ass around the dorm was one thing, even potentially waking the whole floor with an air horn wasn’t this bad, but now they’ve reached the level of public humiliation.

Something deep inside Suga, some very resilient and very proud part of him, finally _snaps_.

He plasters on his best sincere smile.  His most patronizing, evil, sweetheart smile. The  kind of smile that could bring even Tanaka and Noya to their knees back in high school if he turned it on them.

He reaches out and takes both of Tendou’s hands in his own and says, sweet and sinister, “I’m so sorry, Satori-chan, honey, I didn’t realize I was hurting you like that. Let me make it up to you.”

Suga gets up on his tiptoes and kisses Tendou on the cheek in the middle of the quad. He hears girls nearby gasp, some of the less polite onlookers faking gagging noises. Somebody wolf-whistles.

Suga pulls back and takes in Tendou’s startled and stammering face turning as brilliantly red as his hair. He mentally pats himself on the back and allows himself to revel in victory for just a few seconds before he releases Tendou’s hands and heads contently off to chemistry lecture. When Tendou finally shows up after him, he sits on the opposite side of the lecture hall, in the very back row, and Suga doesn’t feel his eyes leave the back of his head for the entire period.

Despite that, Suga is smart enought not to let himself make the mistake of thinking that’s the end of that.

 

 

Suga is a _very_ resilient young man. He’d dealt with quite a lot of shit during his time at Karasuno High, especially as an upperclassman and vice-captain to Tanaka and Nishinoya. He has pretty much seen it all, and pokerfaced his way through most of it. (Although he will resign himself to admitting he lost his composure during the Vice Principal’s Wig Incident. Just a little bit.). He can handle quite a lot, even if _quite a lot_ now entails Tendou fucking with him just to see him squirm.

He’s just a _little_ bit caught off-guard by how much he enjoyed retaliating, though. He can’t get the image of Tendou red-faced and gaping at him, struck silent, out of his head. It’s burned onto his retinas. Some part of him that he refuses to face head-on desperately wants to chase that feeling of adrenaline, of victory, and do it again. Do _what_ again, he’s not sure, and he glares mentally at the traitorous part of his mind that remembers _exactly_ what the calloused palms of Tendou’s hands felt like in his own.

He hadn’t been planning on doing so earlier, but he does have two hours before Tendou returns from classes, and he _does_ have access to Tendou’s room, and he _could_ theoretically prank him back in return for the airhorn on the door ..

“Sugawara Koushi, you are _not_ that petty,” he tells himself in front of the mirror. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to quit staring at Tendou’s door and scheming. But eventually he convinces himself to sit down at his desk to skype call Daichi. He could really use a return to normalcy after the day he’s just had, and he would _love_ to see the look on Daichi’s face when he tells him how he managed to retaliate.

Predictably Daichi’s both mortified on Suga’s behalf and annoyed that Tendou would take it as far as pranking him to begin with, yet he laughs at Suga’s response. Suga misses him desperately.

“My god, Suga,” he says through his laughter, “Nobody knows how secretly evil you can be, do they?”

Suga smiles, all pleasantry and bliss. “I am the picture of innocence. Anyway, I was thinking of paying him back for the airhorn thing, but like, do I really want to? Do I really want to provoke more? He’s gotta be rethinking it all now, right?”

Before Daichi can respond, Kuroo tumbles into the frame of the video call behind Daichi with a ridiculous grin on his face. He slouches eagerly over Daichi’s back and points at Suga through the camera. Suga raises an eyebrow at the close contact - but Daichi doesn’t say anything, so neither does Suga.

“Dude,” says Kuroo, in an awed tone that tells Suga he’s been hearing the whole story and loving it. “Sugawara, my _dude_.”

“Kuroo, no,” says Daichi immediately.

“You _gotta_.”

“Suga, you really shouldn’t. He’ll just take it as incentive to keep messing with you,” Daichi argues. “I should know, these assholes have been doing weird shit to Oikawa’s gym locker all week and he keeps retaliating and they just keep going at it because of it.”

Suga hesitates. “You go to school with Oikawa?”

“You _bet_ I keep retaliating, they deserve it!” yells a voice from somewhere in the background on Daichi’s end of the call.

“Is Oikawa _in your room_?” Suga squints at the screen, trying to look around Daichi and Kuroo’s shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it,” say Kuroo and Daichi at the same time. Kuroo follows it up with “You _gotta_ at least get him back for both the things he already did, man. Even the score.”

Suga considers that Kuroo’s got a point for just slightly long enough to make Daichi worried. “At the very least,” Daichi says with a sigh, “know what you’re getting into if you do. What’d you say about me rooming with this asshole?” He shoves Kuroo off his shoulders. “I dug my own grave. Just know you’ll have to deal with the outcome.”

“That’s fine with me,” says Suga. He’s concerned about the thought that it inexplicably _does_ seem fine with him as they move the subject of the conversation along. Suga asks Daichi about college volleyball and gets to hear him lament the shenanigans of being on a team with Ushijima and Oikawa at the same time, and Daichi asks Suga about what he’s up to in Miyagi, which is about to be part-time job applications, and they laugh and reminisce about high school and enjoy each other’s presence like they always do. Kuroo makes off-color jokes in the background while he plays video games, and Oikawa actually enters the video frame for a few surreal seconds to ask Daichi if he has microwave-safe plates, and everything is good.

By the time the Skype call ends, Suga knows how he’s getting back at Tendou for the airhorn prank. He doesn’t _quite_ know why he’s doing it - Daichi’s right, he’s only going to instigate even more of Tendou’s shenanigans if he does it.

But at the same time... he _really_ wants to chase that heart-pounding adrenaline from earlier. And so he sneaks into Tendou’s room and moves all the furniture six inches to the left. It’s not even difficult; Tendou appears to have quit halfway through moving into his dorm and there are still two whole boxes of god knows what shoved under his desk. At least Suga doesn’t have to worry about knocking things off his shelves and having to put them back in the exact right order this way.

With the furniture moved, Tendou’s dresser sits just slightly in front of the hinge of the door, making it difficult - if not impossible - to open. But it’s not like there isn’t another entrance to Tendou’s room, via the bathroom. It just involves kowtowing to Suga for the privilege of accessing it.

Maybe this is taking it slightly further than an airhorn on the back of a doorknob. But honestly, if it comes to it, Suga is confident he can outlast Tendou in a battle of wits, and he doesn’t think Tendou will keep it up if he knows Suga is ready to fight back. Anyway, they’re even now. Equilibrium is restored.

 

 

An hour later, the sounds of Tendou repeatedly trying to force his door more than a foot open breaks Suga’s concentration on his homework. A muffled “Oh my fucking _god_ ” drifts in from the hallway, and Suga feels a deep, spiteful satisfaction. He finishes his homework without interruption from Tendou, presumably because Tendou’s still trying to get into his own room, and he manages to get to sleep at a reasonable hour for once.

Unfortunately, at three in the morning, he’s awakened by a clicking noise somewhere near him, low and quiet, almost unnoticeable. Then there’s an indistinguishable whisper, and Suga sits bolt upright in the darkness, heart pounding.

“ _I’m coming for you_ ,” says a  hissing voice somewhere under his bed.

Suga _yelps_ as he rockets out of bed toward the light switch.

In the other room, Tendou does a bad job of stifling his laughter. Suga’s eyes narrow and he gets down on his hands and knees. There’s a voice recorder under his bed.  Of course. He turns it off as it carries on clicking and whispering and sets it on his desk. Suga feels somewhat like he’s just gotten off a particularly harrowing rollercoaster, but his emotions are beginning to recede back from panic and instead boil into a real anger. Minor inconveniences are one thing, but this is out of hand. He didn’t expect immediate retaliation, but then, having _expectations_ when it comes to Tendou feels annoyingly pointless anyway. Suga allows himself a brief moment of silent fuming and hand-waving in the privacy of his room before he walks through the bathroom to the closed door to Tendou’s room and knocks politely.

“Yes?” sings Tendou from the other side. The note of mirth in his voice sets something in Suga on fire like nothing else on earth.

“War,” Suga says, quite cordially. “This means war.”

 

 

The next day, Suga returns Tendou’s tape recorder suspended in lime Jello. For good measure, he takes every single pen and pencil he can find in Tendou’s room and freezes those in Jello, too - plus his hairbrush, and his computer mouse. The incredulous laughter from Tendou’s side of the room once he gets home and finds it all startles Suga, mostly because he expected yelling, but also because Tendou’s laughter does a really strange twisting thing to his heart. He decides he has more important things to do - namely, his increasingly large pile of stat homework - and so he files _Tendou’s weirdly endearing laugh_ under “things to firmly ignore.”

Tendou pops his head in shortly afterwards, with a spoon in one hand and the Jello chunk containing all his sharpies in the other. He leans casually against Suga’s desk and says, “How’d you know I like sweets? You’re the best, roomie.”

“You’re welcome,” says Suga, as politely as he can manage.

“This is pretty creative,” Tendou continues, pointing his spoon at the Jello. “Fucking annoying, but creative. I’m not gonna be able to style my hair ‘til I get all the sugar outta my brush. You evil mastermind, you, I knew you had it in you to fight back!” When Tendou’s teasing doesn’t get an immediate reaction, he punctuates it with an aggressive ruffle to Suga’s hair.

Suga purses his lips and continues jotting down numbers on his stat homework. Tendou, not one to be discouraged by being ignored, makes a show out of loudly slurping Jello off his spoon. He manages to free one of his sharpie markers from the Jello, and Suga bites the insides of his cheeks to keep from screaming as he watches Tendou seductively suck Jello off of the sharpie out of the corner of his eye.

The heat under the collar of Suga’s shirt is getting to be just a little too much.

“Can I _help_ you?” Suga demands. Tendou swirls his tongue around the end of the sharpie before releasing it from his mouth and pointing it at Suga. It takes a lot of effort not to pass out on the spot. Something about Tendou’s mouth is annoyingly mesmerizing; Suga’s mind sarcastically supplies him with the thought that _it’s like a train wreck: hard to look away from_ , but unfortunately that’s not the case. Unfortunately, though Suga is loath to admit it to himself, he probably finds Tendou's mouth hot. Suga digs his nails into the palm of his hand as Tendou leans down in his direction.

“Hmm, perhaps,” he says. Then he sets down his Jello and his spoon, takes Suga by the chin and tilts his head up. Their faces are too close. _Way_ too close. Tendou’s breath ghosts over his lips, and Suga worries that he might be visibly blushing. Aside from ruining his otherwise fantastic track record of not losing his cool in front of Tendou, _why_ would he be blushing? The fact that he’d potentially be getting even remotely excited just from Tendou leaning in is enough to annoy him on its own.

Tendou’s lips brush _just barely_ against his, and Suga short-circuits.

To his credit, Suga remains proud of his composure and lack of outward reaction. But on the inside, his mind is plummeting into a deadly repeating time loop of Tendou leaning in, Tendou’s fingers light on his jawline, Tendou’s mouth feather-light against his own. He starts to feel a little bit dizzy.

It feels like ten years before Tendou pulls back, but in reality it’s barely been a second and he’s gone, completely unruffled, spoonful of green Jello right back in his mouth. Suga inhales deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Tendou?”

“Yes?”

“What was that?”

“That’s for yesterday,” says Tendou with a smirk that could stop an army. He waltzes back into his room, leaving Suga to contemplate his newfound existential confusion. He does not get his pile of statistics homework finished. He doesn’t even touch it. He’s too busy lamenting the fact that Tendou Satori exists, and lamenting the fact that he’s even having to lament _that_ to begin with.

Three days later, Suga is starting to get a little paranoid, because Tendou hasn’t done anything _new_ yet. Besides the not-quite-a-kiss - but Tendou already told him what that was in retaliation for, and Suga’s trying so very hard to _not think about that._

Anyway, there’s no possible way he’s given up; he’d be sulking more, and when Suga saw him in chem lecture he was definitely not sulking. Tendou’s usual exuberant self had sat right behind him in the lecture hall, and it wasn’t until Suga stood up that he realized Tendou had been slowly safety-pinning his hoodie to the cushioned back of his seat. But it’s not like _this_ could possibly be full retaliation for the Jello thing; Tendou had expressed repeatedly and quite vehemently to Suga how frustrating it was to still be accidentally combing Jello into his hair, and thus hadn’t styled it for the past two days while he tried to wash the brush out.

Unfortunately, with his hair down and without any product in it, curling slightly at the ends, Suga is grudgingly forced to admit to himself that Tendou is… not too bad looking. His hair just barely brushes the tips of his ears and hangs down in front of his eyes. It would be ridiculous on almost anyone else, like a whole different kind of Bad Stereotypical Anime Hairstyle than his usual, but somehow it suits him.

He’s downright cute, from the proper angle, but _only_ from the proper angle. It’s not like Tendou’s _cute_ cute. He’s not Suga’s _type_ , anyway. Of course not. Not that Suga _has_ a type. But objectively speaking, in the right light, with his ridiculous hair down, he might to some people be considered _cute._ He admits this through very gritted teeth over Skype to Daichi, whose eyebrows raise slowly into his hairline over the course of the conversation.

“Sounds like Refreshing-kun has a little _crush_ ,”Oikawa comments from the other side of Daichi and Kuroo’s couch.

“Okay, first of all, I’m _never_ getting used to that,” Suga says, pointing off-screen at where he assumes Oikawa is sitting. This is the fourth consecutive Skype call with Daichi that’s contained not just Kuroo and Bokuto, but also Oikawa, and Suga can’t figure out _how on earth_ they keep coming to be in the same room on purpose. “Second,” he adds, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t have a crush on Tendou. Why would you think I had a crush on Tendou?”

Suga vehemently does not mention the not-kiss. He doesn’t think about the not-kiss. He _especially_ doesn’t think about what a maybe-real-kiss might be like. He _doesn’t_.

“You did call him cute, buddy,” Bokuto points out, leaning over the couch behind Daichi. Suga absolutely does not miss how Bokuto’s hand rests comfortably on Daichi’s shoulder. He makes an active decision to ignore the Tendou Problem. Instead he turns his gaze to hyper-analyze Bokuto’s hand on Daichi’s shoulder and his thumb on Daichi’s neck slipping under the collar of Daichi’s shirt and oh my god.

“He’s the opposite of cute and his personality is terrible,” says Suga. “The fact that he won maybe 5000 yen _maximum_ in the genetic lottery is incidental.”

“Suga-chan, are you blushing?” Oikawa asks, leaning over Daichi’s lap and into view of the camera (and Suga _also_ doesn’t miss how little a reaction Daichi has to this). “You’re totally blushing. Dai-chan, your high school sweetheart’s got a crush~!”

“You let him call you _Dai-chan?”_ Suga chokes. “Okay, _who’_ s got a crush on whom here?”

Oikawa looks up at Daichi, a little bit confused. Daichi staunchly does not look at Oikawa and begins to turn very red. Bokuto, who’s still got his hands on Daichi’s shoulders, says “Ohhh boy, Sugawara, have we got a lotta funny stories to tell you,” and that’s when Suga decides he has had _enough_ shenanigans for one day. He bids them all a pleasant goodbye, ends the call, and promptly buries his face in a pillow.

 

 

Suga is joined the following Monday in his normally empty row in his stat lecture by an eerie yet elegant person with dyed pink hair. He looks vaguely familiar, but Suga thinks he'd remember the pink hair if he'd seen them before. Suga watches out of the corner of his eye as the person sinks into the seat right next to him, sets three 5-Hour Energy drinks on the fold-out desk, and methodically opens and chugs all three. Suga says a silent prayer for their health and safety.

"I hear you and Tendou are waging war on each other," says Eerie-Yet-Elegant. Suga raises an eyebrow. "Semi Eita. Tendou and I went to high school together."

"Shiratorizawa's reserve setter!" Suga exclaims, finally remembering. They played the same position, technically. Suga’s immediately more inclined to be friendly, despite Semi Eita’s implied allegiance with Tendou. Setters gotta stick together.

"And Karasuno's," Semi nods in his direction. Suga nods back in affirmation.

"You, uh." Suga eyes the empty 5-Hour Energies, and takes note of the bags under Semi’s eyes. "Doing alright there?"

"Peachy fucking keen," Semi replies. "Your self-declared arch nemesis kept me up all night."

Suga's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

"Oh, _no_ ," Semi laughs. "Not remotely. He's planning some _weird shit_ for you and he was bouncing ideas off me 'til four in the goddamn morning."

"I'm so sorry." So _that's_ why it had seemed so quiet on the other side of the doors last night.

"Hey, he's nuts, but he's my nuts."

Suga just keeps one eyebrow raised and smiles politely at Semi.

"Oh my god, the caffeine has _not_ kicked in yet, please spare me."

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Trust me, I’m well aware.”

Apparently terrible puns aren't enough to ruin Semi's impression of Suga, because for the rest of the period they occasionally lean into Suga's space to mutter sarcastic comments about the lecture slides, nearly making Suga crack up mid-lecture. By the end of the hour he's decided Semi Eita is a genuinely good person, somewhere under the abrasive personality issues.,And also, sarcasm aside, they’re _very good_ at statistics. At the end of the class, Suga puts forth an offer for the two of them to work on their weekly problem sets together.

“I’ve got a study group already,” they say, and Suga deflates just a bit, because he’s only barely begun making friends here - but then Semi continues, “Which you’re welcome to join, Sugawara. But only if you dish on your revenge plans for Tendou.” Suga can’t tell through the deadpan of their voice if they’re joking or not. “I love the hell outta him but he’s absolutely off the wall sometimes, so it’s nice to see that he’s finally met his match.”

Suga feels his face heat up, just a little bit. “What do you mean by that?”

Semi blinks at him, a little bit taken aback, before their lips curl into a smirk. Clearly whatever Suga’s concerned it meant – and he’s not entirely sure _what_ he’s concerned it meant – is not what they intended it to mean, but the more fidgety he gets the wider Semi’s smirk grows.

“Don’t worry about it,” they say.or a horrifying moment, they remind Suga of Kuroo. Then it fades, and Semi cuffs Suga on the shoulder in a friendly sort-of way, and after exchanging numbers they part ways.

 

 

Later that night, Suga allows himself the luxury of a _very_ long shower. It’s not like dorm showers are actually luxurious; they’re cramped and uncomfortable and the water pressure cuts out if more than one person on the floor is showering. Also, there might be something growing in the cracks between the tiles. But Suga’s beginning to run out of quiet, solitary places. He’s _pretty_ sure Tendou won’t walk in on him in the shower; it locks from the inside, after all.

Besides, the water’s warm, and it feels pleasant running over his skin.

Over the course of the shower, Suga tries to sort his thoughts. Some of them are mundane: school, homework, the open job application on his desktop for the position selling tickets and concessions at the local community theater. For a while, he considers his Skype conversations with Daichi, and how Kuroo and Bokuto very obviously insert themselves into his space, and how with each subsequent skype call Oikawa has been progressing from across the room to on the same sofa to _literally leaning across Daichi’s lap_. That line of thinking gets surreal, though, so eventually he’s forced to address his actual immediate concerns: Tendou.

Fucking Tendou Satori.

A brief two seconds pass before Suga thumps his head against the damp shower wall and curses his mental phrasing, because now he’s thinking about _fucking_ Tendou Satori and there’s the problem, right there. Loath as he is to admit it, he _may_ hypothetically be just a little bit attracted to Tendou. Hypothetically. Maybe. Not enough to be a _problem_. Emotionally, he has no idea what that entails, because emotionally he’s still enjoying pissing Tendou off, staunchly refusing to react to his shenanigans, and continuing to make him scream.

 _Phrasing!_ Suga berates himself - now he’s thinking about what Tendou might sound like in bed. He wants to dissolve and be washed down the shower drain because this is just embarrassing, and kind of - god help him - a turn-on. Instead, he shuts his eyes and vigorously scrubs shampoo into his hair, frustration prickling under his skin.

The fact of the matter is, he can’t kill the memory of Tendou almost kissing him. Even worse is that his traitorous imagination keeps imagining _what if Tendou had actually kissed him?_ If he thinks about it, he wouldn’t anticipate that Tendou would be a good kisser in the least - he thinks he’d expect chapped lips, and maybe biting. Also, if prior near-experience is any indication, jello breath. But the reality was that Tendou’s almost-kiss had been nothing like Suga _may or may not have_ expected it to be like - it had been careful, _hesitant_ , almost. The feel of Tendou’s lips brushing against Suga’s own still echoes in his memory enough to make him shiver.

Suga steps out of the shower no more relaxed than he stepped into it. As he sits on the edge of the bathtub and towels dry, he tells himself that it’s not like finding Tendou attractive is a _problem_. He’s not the kind of person to get distracted or give in over things like this. He’s still determined to win this ridiculous prank war they’ve started.

Sure, his embarrassing high school thing for Kiyoko had been hard to deal with, but only at close range, and also only because girls are terrifying and Kiyoko wasn’t normally affectionate. So he’s got an excuse. And he’s more used to retaining his composure around cute boys anyway - he managed with Daichi for long enough. The only one who noticed was Asahi, who proceeded to try and give him a very awkward Talk about it.

No, Suga is _fine_. Tendou can get all up in his face. He can make Suga’s life Hell. He can even prank Suga with a real kiss and he won’t bat an eyelid. Probably. Suga is _not_ going to give in and it’s going to be _fine_.

The steam has cleared from the mirror when Suga finally finishes his mental pep-talk and stands up, only to get a perfect view of his now _violently pink hair_.

There’s no fighting the yell of surprise that he lets out. He claps a hand over his mouth just in time to hear Tendou start cackling in the other room.

“You win this round, you little…” Suga mutters under his breath. Louder, to the closed door to Tendou’s room, he says, “You better watch your back.”

 

 

Semi Eita cracks up immediately upon seeing Suga the following Wednesday in stats lecture, and Suga has to shake his head in disbelief because of _course_ Tendou got the dye from Semi. Daichi gapes at him over Skype, Bokuto tries to rec him shampoo brands that’ll get the color out, and Kuroo tells him the bubblegum pink suits him. Tendou also tells him the pink suits him, with a pleasant sneer on his face, but this makes Suga’s heart beat funny in a way Kuroo’s comments didn’t and he thinks _oh god this is worse than I thought._

It’s alright, he’ll have his revenge soon enough. Over Skype with Daichi and what’s turning into his ever-present ex-captain harem, Oikawa and Kuroo have suggested all manner of retaliatory pranks for Suga to pull - which is why he finds himself on Wednesday afternoon on a stepstool in the bathtub, unscrewing the shower head and shoving bouillon cubes into the inside.

According to Oikawa, the cubes are some kind of weird American food not unlike curry roux, and if you drop one in water it dissolves into soup broth. It’ll be a pain in the ass to clean out of the shower later, but it’ll be worth it if it means Tendou’s bathing in soup tonight.

After reaffixing the shower head, Suga heads to the library to meet up with Semi and the rest of the study group, which turns out to be Shiratorizawa’s ex-libero Yamagata and Date Kougyo’s previous vice captain Kamasaki.

“Volleyball’s a small world,” explains Kamasaki. His cordial arm around Suga’s shoulder isn’t nearly as emotionally upheaving as Tendou’s always is. “We recognized each other right off the bat in Econ.”

“I’m in stat with Semi,” Suga explains. “Glad to see you’re doing well.”

“I’d be doing better if it’d been me that made it to nationals instead of you,” jokes Kamasaki - but then he leans in conspiratorially and adds, “Either way, seeing you crows beat Seijou after they trashed our underclassmen was pretty something.”

“We had a score to settle,” Suga explains easily. However, he finds himself once again boggled by Oikawa Tooru in Daichi’s personal space. How on earth _did_ the Karasuno/Aoba Johsai score get settled enough for them to be cordial?

The group of them gets coffee in the café in the library. Suga raises a critical eyebrow at Semi’s four shots of espresso, but then Yamagata says, “What, only four?” and Suga realizes with irritation that he might have been recruited as the new requisite mom friend of this particular squad. They make it a good successful hour into working before Semi’s phone blares out what sounds like an air raid siren - possibly the most irritating ringtone known to man.

Semi answers the call with an affectionate, “Hey, asshole.”

Suga tries to start in on the next part of the assignment with Kamasaki and Yamagata while Semi’s on the phone, but as soon as he puts his pencil to the paper, Semi’s tapping on his wrist.

“Dude,” they say, snickering. “Thought I made you promise to dish on your revenge pranks.”

Suga tries to cover his smirk. Yamagata grins next to him - clearly he’s at least heard tell of the Tendou Antics Saga.

“He’s mad and begging to borrow my shower,” says Semi. “Wanna come with when I let him in? I’m not responsible for your life if you do, though - he _is_ pretty much my soulmate and I gotta take his side in a fight.”

“The look on his face _might_ be worth it,” Suga admits. Semi gives him a thumbs up before telling Tendou they’ll be right over to let him in. With a promise that they’ll be back in just a few minutes, a half hour _tops_ , they leave Yamagata and Kamasaki in the library to work on their econ homework together. On the walk back to Semi’s dorm, Suga relays his side of the entire prank war thus far. Somehow laying the entire thing out makes it seem so much more amusing in retrospect - and simultaneously much more infuriating. Semi laughs about as much as Suga would expect someone who’s platonically married to Tendou to laugh at his misfortune, but:

“ _Soup cubes_? Dude, that’s just gross.”

“You can blame Oikawa Tooru for that one, because he’s the one who came up with it,” Suga admits. “Or, I think some of his high school classmates pulled it on him at a training camp once?”

“ _Oikawa_?”

“It’s a _long_ story,” Suga says as they take the elevator up to Semi’s floor. When they arrive and turn the corner, Tendou is sitting outside Semi’s door with a towel thrown over his head. He stands up immediately upon seeing Suga, eyes even wider than normal. He opens and closes his mouth incredulously, and Suga bites his lip to keep from laughing.

“ _Soup_ ,” he finally spits out, face reddening in anger. “Fucking hell, dude, you have one messed up sense of humor.”

Something about seeing Tendou lose his shit first seems to hit Suga just right, and he finds himself just on the edge of boiling over. Part of him finds this hilarious; he’s achieved victory, after all. The other part of him, the part that’s been getting pranked by Tendou for the past 2 weeks, has reached its limit. He’s made Tendou lose it first, so now it’s okay for him to do so too. He holds back, regardless - he won’t give Tendou the satisfaction of knowing his shenanigans have actually had _that_ much of an effect - but he’s not above snapping back.

“Says the guy that snuck into my room in the middle of the night with a tape recorder!”

“You snuck into my room first!” Towel still over his head, Tendou stalks towards Suga. Semi sidesteps out of the way, but Suga holds his ground. “And fucked with all my stuff!”

“Well, _you’re_ the one that brought all the damn flirting and kissing jokes into this!”

Immediately, Suga knows he’s crossed some line. Tendou freezes up, his cheeks color even darker – in embarrassment or rage, Suga isn’t sure. He grits his teeth, his hands clench at his sides and, after a moment of what might be the most uncomfortable silence Suga’s ever experienced, he turns around, snatches Semi’s room key out of their hand, and shuts the door behind himself.

Suga stares at the closed door, feeling like he’s royally fucked up. It hurts a lot more than he’d have expected.

Suddenly Semi grabs him by the shoulder and pushes him lightly into the wall. It’s not the least bit _rough_ , it’s not even really that threatening, but Suga finds himself bracing for some kind of impact nonetheless.

“Kissing jokes?” they say. There’s a note in their voice that Suga has absolutely heard before in his own, a kind of quiet and defensive anger. Their eyes lock onto Suga’s, sharp and intimidating and more awake than Suga’s seen since their match back in high school.

“He started it with the joke flirting,” Suga says, but he can’t shake this terrible sinking feeling. “He tried to prank me in front of the whole quad by yelling that I was a bad boyfriend and I never show him any affection, so I got the better of him by kissing him on the cheek. And then he nearly kissed me again later. I thought he was just joking around.”

Semi deflates a little bit, but they keep frowning. “Dammit, Satori. I thought he was kidding about pulling that,” they admit. Their eyebrows knit together in thought. “Probably he _is_ fucking around? But regardless, don’t… throw it in his face like that. He might take it wrong.”

Suga almost doesn’t want to ask, and it probably isn’t Semi’s place to say it anyway, but there’s no way there’s not some kind of story there. Even if the story is just, “Tendou Satori is into guys.”

 _Probably he_ is _fucking around_ echoes back and forth in Suga’s head. He hates how much worse he feels for having heard it.

“So, yeah. It’s officially my job as Satori’s qpp to let you know, I guess.” And with that, Semi plasters a smile back onto their face. They clap Suga on the shoulder in what should by all right be a friendly manner - it feels more like a death sentence, punctuated quite nicely by Semi’s following statement: “If you hurt him for real, in any way, for any reason, we’re gonna have _words_.”

“Right,” gasps Suga. “Yes, no. Don’t worry.”

Semi’s smile relaxes back from _planning to dispose of a body_ into something less concerning, and Suga feels himself breathe again.

“Right,” he repeats. Semi Eita should’ve been a regular at Shiratorizawa, even if only because, if they tried, their eyes could destroy people from all the way across the court.

“We good?” asks Semi.

Suga nods slowly. “You care quite a lot about him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well. We’ve been through some real shit, y’know?” Semi scratches the back of their neck self-consciously; it’s clear getting up in Suga’s face hadn’t been something they’d been planning to do. “There’re just some things you don’t go through without basically being inseparable after, you feel?” Suga isn’t sure he does, not entirely, but he nods anyway. Semi shrugs, and then nods toward their dorm room door. “We can call the guys and keep studying here, if you want,” they say.

Suga’s eyebrows knit together. “I thought Tendou took your key?”

Semi’s expression immediately sours. They stuff their hands in their front pockets, back pockets, sweater pockets, and every pocket on their backpack before rounding on the door to their own dorm room and knocking loudly.

“Dammit, Satori! Lock me outta my own damn room, I swear to god-”

 

 

The next day, Suga doesn’t call Daichi. Daichi is who he calls to make jokes and tease and, if both of them need to, share some real emotions. Right now, he doesn’t need the entire Tokyo Entourage Captain Squad getting in on his confused emotions - so he finds himself a quiet secluded bench under a tree to sit on, at the very edge of campus, and puts in a distress call to Asahi. Asahi is who he went to when he had a crisis over liking Daichi, and an even bigger crisis over liking Kiyoko. As anxious as Asahi is, he’s actually the best to go to for advice. Being constantly concerned about everything has taught Asahi how to deal with concerning things. Tendou Satori is on many levels a concerning thing, so Suga hopes he’ll have at least _some_ advice for how to deal with what he’s scared is quickly becoming a Problem.

Suga lies back on the bench, calls Asahi, and, after brief pleasantries and how-have-you-beens, Suga tells him the whole story. From finding out he was roommates with Tendou, all the way through to Semi’s reveal about him last night, _including_ the not-kiss he’d avoided telling Daichi and his new and sometimes unsettling squad about.

Asahi’s immediate reaction is, “Suga, why didn’t you request a room change?”

“Uh, because I don’t give up that easily?”

“Taking care of your own mental health isn’t giving up.”

Suga sighs. “The part of this I wanted you to help me with wasn’t the part where Tendou is constantly pranking me. It’s the part where Tendou is gay and has some kind of ambiguous insecurities about being gay and I hypothetically may like him more than I want to. And I think we just had a fight.”

“Oh. Well, you could always do what I did.”

“You quit the volleyball club after fighting with Noya. And you hadn’t even admitted you liked him yet then.”

“Okay, well-”

“And you only ended up getting together with him in the end because Hinata thought you were already dating and asked Noya how sex would work with that big a height difference.”

On the other end of the call, Asahi makes a strangled sort of noise.

“Sorry,” says Suga, giggling a bit.

“You are not.”

“No, I’m not. But you’re happier for it, aren’t you? You and Noya are happy.”

“We are,” admits Asahi. “And I guess that’s the advice I’ll give you?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to tell him, but no matter what the outcome, it’ll be easier once you’ve gotten it off your chest, I think,” Asahi explains. “Keeping it bottled up just makes you more worried about finally getting it out. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah, I know you know,” Suga replies. They keep talking for awhile longer, because it’s been too long. Asahi tells Suga that he’s majoring in psych, and that he’s considering studying abroad in America if his English gets good enough, and that he’s planning to go watch Karasuno play at the Interhigh preliminaries. Suga agrees to meet him there so that they can embarrass their underclassmen by cheering loudly and obnoxiously.

The last thing Asahi says before he signs off is: “Suga, you really need to learn to admit to yourself when you like someone. Even I’m better at that.”

The last thing Suga says is: “Fight me, big guy.”

But he _does_ take Asahi’s words to heart. He doesn’t want things to escalate to the horrifyingly embarrassing point they had last year, when Kiyoko had held his hands at the match against Shiratorizawa and he’d lit up like a Christmas light. He hates the thought that he could develop Real Feelings for Tendou, especially considering how pink his hair still is and how honestly annoyed he still is about being embroiled in a prank war (although, he admits, he _might_ be enjoying coming up with new ways to fuck with Tendou in return).

On the way home Suga finally picks up the brand of dye-stripping shampoo Bokuto had suggested to him. He makes sure to run the shower long enough that evening that the soup cubes wash all the way out before he steps in. Luckily, the dye starts coming out pretty quickly, so when Suga steps out of the shower he’s a lot more pastel than when he got in.

When he goes to brush his teeth, he nearly chokes on his toothbrush. The toothpaste is fucking _spicy_ , and while Suga isn’t ever one to complain about spicy food – he regularly orders the hottest thing on the menu just to watch Daichi squirm – but this is unexpected and, frankly, disturbing. Suga spits the toothpaste out immediately and splashes water in his mouth before opening his toothpaste and – _yep_ , that sure is wasabi.

“That’s just cruel,” he yells through Tendou’s door. Then he hesitates, because there’s still a chance after last night that Tendou is actually upset with him. But if he was upset, would he keep pranking Suga? Or is this a prank left over from before that Suga somehow missed? At this point, while it is ridiculously annoying, it had been starting to get kind of fun, maybe even a little flirty. Messing with another guy in the shower is flirty, right?

 _“Phrasing,”_ Suga curses himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. He takes a deep breath and knocks on the door to Tendou’s. After a moment, Tendou answers the door in neon green pajama bottoms and a One Piece t-shirt. He’s got a manga of some kind open in his hand, and Suga catches the title – _A Certain Scientific Railgun_? – before Tendou props that hand up on his hip and cocks his head to the side to pout at Suga.

“What up?” says Tendou. The longer Suga stares, the more he’s sure that Tendou really _doesn’t_ blink as much as normal people do, or maybe time just feels like it’s taking way longer as Suga holds eye contact with him, and _ohhhh no_ …

“This isn’t over?” Suga tries, fidgeting with the edge of his bath towel in a way he hopes doesn’t look obvious.

 _What a terrible moment_ _to remember you’re wearing nothing but a bath towel._

“Oh,” Tendou blinks at him, startled. And then his face contorts into one _scary_ grin that catches Suga completely off guard - and makes his heart jump quite traitorously in his chest. “Of course it’s not.”

“Of course,” repeats Suga, smirking back in return. The pair of them spend just long enough smirking back and forth that it starts to become a little bit weird. Suga eventually nods, and waves a hand in the direction of Tendou’s room. “Well, ah. As you were then. If that’s all we wanted to say.”

Tendou simply raises an eyebrow as he leans on the doorframe. “Sure,” he says.  But just before he turns to go, Suga _definitely_ catches Tendou raking his eyes appreciatively over his mostly-naked body, and barely restrains a very embarrassing noise.

Tendou shuts the door with a pleasant, “See you tomorrow, Koushi-kun~!” and Suga buries his face in his hands and contemplates the void.

This is worse than he’d thought.

 

 

The next morning, Suga delivers a “peace offering” to Tendou in the form of a massive bottle of Coca-Cola. Unbeknownst to Tendou, it is a trap. With much cajoling from Oikawa, Bokuto, and Kuroo, who co-opted Daichi’s laptop and stayed on Skype with him the entire time he put it together to make sure he did it correctly, Suga has constructed a soda grenade. It’s a complicated little thing, involving threading string through a Mentos candy, suspending it inside the neck of a bottle of Coca-Cola by screwing the lid over the string, and then cutting off the excess string so it became invisible. As he hands the bottle to Tendou through the door of their shared bathroom, Suga is sure this is the most perfectly executed prank anyone’s ever committed.

Unfortunately, Tendou opens it immediately, before Suga can clear the blast radius, and both of them get drenched in Coke.

Suga has to assume Tendou knew something like that was going to happen and sacrificed himself for the sake of getting the better of Suga as well, but that doesn’t deter him in the least. Semi Eita’s threats of vengeance should he hurt Tendou still echo in his head as he nods casually to himself and strips out of his Coca-Cola soaked shirt right in front of Tendou.

While he’s still obviously pissed about the soda, Suga gives Tendou credit for the lack of change in his irritated facial expression as he shuts the door to his side of the dorm. Suga wonders if the slamming of the door in his face is because Tendou is admitting defeat this round, or because Suga’s fucked up.

Ten seconds later, Tendou reopens it, Coke bottle still in hand, with a loud, “Oh, is _that_ how we’re doing it now?”

“Pardon?” says Suga, raising an eyebrow. Tendou grins like a maniac and slams the mostly-empty Coke bottle down on the edge of the bathtub. Suga stares blankly at the bottle, then back at Tendou, and promptly loses control of his poker face as he watches Tendou unbutton his soda-soaked shorts.

“ _Pardon?_ ” he repeats, a little bit choked. He tries not to stare at Tendou’s legs as the shorts drop to the floor, leaving him in _One Piece_ -patterned boxers.

“You started it,” says Tendou. And indeed Suga did, which means either he retaliates or he loses, right here and now, to Tendou’s nicely-toned thighs.

 _And what a way to go that would be_ , he thinks, quite traitorously, before shimmying out of his jeans. His boxer briefs get caught on the button of his pants and almost go with them, dear god, but it’s pretty darn worth it if Tendou’s badly-stifled whimper is any indication.

“Your move.” Suga crosses his arms over his naked chest and determinedly doesn’t look at the blush rising on Tendou’s face. Or at his thighs. God dammit.

Tendou holds eye contact with Suga for an uncomfortably long time, long enough for Suga to really examine how his nose scrunches in frustration and the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s not sure whether to grin or growl. Suga tells himself he isnt paying intensely close attention to Tendou’s fingers twisting in the hem of his t-shirt. He firmly turns his back on the anticipation.

“You win this round, pretty boy,” Tendou says eventually. He turns to leave.

“You’re kidding.”

Tendou leans heavily on the doorframe. “Nope.”

“Somehow I thought you’d go all the way?” Suga tries to explain. “You don’t seem like the modest type.”

Tendou laughs. “I’m not,” he replies, “But I’m gonna guess you never tried to contort your way out of a binder while soaking wet.”

“No, I haven’t,” says Suga, and then, “Wait, did you just come out to me?”

Tendou pretends to think about his response for a minute. “No, I think I’d remember doing a thing like that, wouldn’t I?” He flashes Suga the most teasing grin yet, but his smile wavers a little bit - like he’s nervous.

 _Anyone would be_ , thinks Suga, who’s been the go-to guy on Karasuno for three years for _several_ people’s first test-run at coming out to the team (or test run for coming out to the Fukurodani team, or the Nekoma team, or in one case, even Aoba Johsai’s team.) He’s seen his fair share of panic and nerves. Something about volleyball, he thinks, attracts all the queer kids in school. Something about Suga, though, seems to indicate a calm, no-judgement safety zone.

Tendou’s still smiling, but he’s staring at him like he’s considering bolting back through the door of his room, and Suga realizes he’s been silent for just a little too long.

“If I was going to freak out at you, don’t you think I’d have done it by now?” he says. “You’re completely safe with me, there’s no need to worry. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable or anything with the, um, stripping.”

Tendou doesn’t stop staring, although his fingertips do stop twitching in the direction of the doorknob. Eventually he smirks again, and says, “Wow, Koushi-kun, that’s the gayest statement I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth.”

“Oh, please,” Suga teases back even as he breathes a massive sigh of relief. He pokes at Tendou’s stomach just to watch him squirm away. “You’re the gay one - I _definitely_ remember you saying some really gay stuff about your captain during our match in high school.”

“Well, someone on the court had to compete with your obvious thirst for _your_ captain,” Tendou retaliates, dragging Suga into a headlock and ruffling his hair wildly. Suga tries very hard to forget he’s shirtless, but Tendou’s bare arm against his shoulders is making it _quite_ difficult.

“That is a _thing of the past_.”

“Oh, so it was a _thing_?”

Suga manages to wrestle himself free after elbowing Tendou in the ribs a handful of times, and they stand opposite each other in the bathroom, giggling. As Suga catches his breath, he comes to the horrible realization that the past five minutes in Tendou’s company, despite their bizarre start and innate awkwardness, have actually been not unpleasant.

 _Kill me now before it’s too late,_ he thinks. This is how his crushes get him every single time: the moment there’s a spark of friendship, all hope is lost. Suga falls hard and makes an embarrassing spectacle of himself and everything is terrible for everyone involved.

It’s at about this point that Suga realizes Tendou called him _pretty boy_ when he admitted defeat, and he feels his face beginning to heat up uncomfortably.

“We’re not friends or something like that, now, are we?” asks Tendou, fidgeting around with the forgotten Coke bottle, tipping it back and forth on the edge of the tub. “Cos I still got the _best_ tricks left to pull on you.”

“Oh, this _definitely_ isn’t over,” Suga agrees, and then, because he’s still thinking about _pretty boy,_ it’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself: “Bring it on, hot stuff.”

Tendou gapes at him. Suga knows he’s definitely blushing now - he feels like his face is on fire - but at least Tendou’s cheeks are turning just as red as his own.

“I stand corrected,” says Tendou. “ _That’s_ the gayest thing I ever heard get said.”

 

 

“This is the greatest mistake of my young life,” Suga tells Daichi as he walks down the road in a fresh not-drenched-in-soda outfit. Although he’s wary of leaving his room unattended right after Tendou’s declared the prank war still totally on, the fact of the matter is that Suga needs to go drop off his job application at the local theater - he’s been putting it off just a little too long.

“So you have a crush, big deal,” Daichi replies. Suga can hear, in the background of the call, the sound of a knife on a cutting board as Daichi makes food, and he wonders if he should eat some real non-microwavable non-campus food on his way back, or if that’d take too long and give Tendou more time to rig up something crazy.

“It _is_ a big deal,” says Suga. “This isn’t you or Kiyoko-san, those were manageable. This is more like… Ugh. This is like. Uncharted territory.”

“Hey now,” Daichi chides. “The last time you used _that_ phrase was when Ukai first started coaching us and you went on a crusade to find out how old he was to see if it was legal to flirt with him.”

Suga nearly drops his phone. “We don’t talk about the Ukai thing.”

“Isn’t Ukai Karasuno’s coach?” yells Kuroo in the background of the call, before bursting into disgusting hyena laughter. “Oh my god, Sugawara, way to live on the edge!”

“Am I on speakerphone?” Suga yelps.

“Um.”

“I’m going to come to Tokyo and kill you,” he says, and Daichi laughs along with Kuroo, the little traitor.

“We may need to talk logistics if you’re gonna come visit.”

“Don’t change the subject, anyway,” he says. “We’re lamenting my crush on Tendou Satori.”

“So you finally admit it,” Daichi chuckles.

“You have a crush on Satori?” says a startlingly deep and even more startlingly familiar voice on Daichi’s end of the call. Suga’s eyebrows knit together.

“Um. To whom am I speaking?” he asks, already dreading the answer with a shiver of grim anticipation.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi,” replies the ex-captain of Shiratorizawa. It takes a lot of effort for Suga not to scream.

“I am gonna need to call you back,” says Daichi, who immediately hangs up in a way that is entertainingly reminiscent of how Suga ended a call back at the start of the school year. Suga texts Daichi that they _need_ to Skype soon, because as far as he’s concerned, Ushijima Wakatoshi needs to be seen to be believed.

Suga walks the rest of the way to the theater, hands in his application, and stops by the nearest convenience store on the way back to campus to pick up a bento box. College has definitely lowered his standards of cuisine, but at least convenience store bento is reliably available. He takes his time trying to choose between inevitably mediocre kappa maki and equally mediocre and probably moist tempura. Eventually he decides on the kappa maki, if only because _moist_ feels like a word Tendou would weaponize at him. He also snags a soda ( _Pepsi,_ because Coke has betrayed him), pays for his things, and makes it back to campus before the sun has set.

When Suga opens the door of his dorm room, he is immediately overwhelmed by a wave of packing peanuts, which spill out into the hallway and get stuck in his clothes. Through the onslaught of tiny pieces of foam, Suga realizes Tendou had blocked in the door from the inside with a massive sheet of cardboard, and filled the space between it and the door with enough packing peanuts to fill an entire suitcase. Suga is bombarded with tiny foam bits, which stick to his clothes and hair and the plastic bag his bento is in. When they finally stop spilling out over him and into the hallway, Suga picks one out of his bangs, stares at it, and groans.

“Dear god,” he says, loud enough that he knows Tendou will hear. Sure enough, he immediately pops his head out the door and snaps a picture of Suga looking like a styrofoam katamari.  “I don’t suppose you’ll help me clean this all up?” Suga asks.

Tendou snickers. “Course not.”

Of course. “Then you’re okay with me reusing the packing peanuts for my own nefarious purposes, I suppose.”

Tendou’s snicker grows into a full-bodied laugh. “There isn’t a nefarious bone in your body, Koushi-kun. Devious, yes,” he says, pointing accusingly despite his grin. “But you’ll never convince me of _nefarious_.”

“And why not?”

With two broad steps, Tendou closes the distance between their two dorm room doors and leans well into Suga’s space. Suga catches a whiff of Tendou’s cologne and stifles a sigh. And then there’s Tendou’s hand, in his personal space, poking him on the cheek like a child. “You might be a tricky little motherfucker,” he says, “but you’re too _Suga_ to be anything but sweet.”

Very much against his will, Suga finds himself laughing. “Oh my god, was that supposed to be a pun?”

“What, not up to your standards, Sugarplum?”

Suga stifles the tail end of his giggling and ignores the _Sugarplum_. “I just think you could do better.”

Tendou’s eyes widen even more, which ought to be impossible. “Was that a compliment?”

“Of course not.” And with that, Suga stoops to start sweeping up the packing peanuts. He supposes he was mostly kidding about using them for his own pranking in return - he has no idea what he’ll do with them besides maybe donate them to the art department or something. But no sooner has he leaned over to start sweeping them out of the hallway and towards his door than does he feel a friendly _smack_ against his ass.

Suga shoots upright immediately.  Tendou cackles as he runs back to his room before he can get caught. He leaves Suga behind in the hallway, boggling over the fact that _this_ is who he fell for in college. Not the gorgeous Semi Eita who studies stat with him, not Daichi or Kiyoko any longer, not any number of the dashing individuals who attended the training camps in Tokyo back in high school. No, Suga has thrown caution and perhaps common decency to the wind, and somehow placed his affections with Tendou Satori, endearing but weird, endlessly irritating but at the same time fascinating.

 _He made a cute pun at me_ , thinks Suga. And  it was a bad pun, but the _oh no, not this, not again, why_ feeling of sudden and unexpected affection is there nonetheless.

Probably it says more about Suga than Tendou that he finds terrible flirty puns attractive.

 

 

As soon as the packing peanuts are dealt with, Suga texts Daichi to set up a Skype call.

“Can you make sure nobody else is listening?” is the first thing he asks. “I just. I’ll tell your captain harem about this eventually, but right now _you’re_ my best friend and I just wanna vent emotions at you.”

“Of course,” says Daichi, shooing Kuroo away as he picks up his laptop and moves to his desk on the other side of the room. “Wait, captain _harem_?”

Suga waves this comment off. “Not the point. I just. This is _bad_ , Daichi. This is really bad. He’s _annoyingly_ cute.”

“Wow, you’re in deep.”

“He flirted at me with puns.”

“Oh, you’re doomed for sure.”

“Don’t play with my emotions, Daichi.”

“Sorry.” Daichi doesn’t sound especially sorry, but that’s just how they are with each other. They can’t turn off the joking. “Are you gonna tell him, then?”

This isn’t something Suga had previously considered, but the thought of it makes him freeze up. Obviously he _could_ tell Tendou. In theory. Semi had implied hard enough that Tendou was gay, so it wasn’t like he had an absolute zero percent chance of reciprocation. But the fact of the matter still stands that, for the past month or so, they’ve been doing everything in their power to get each other to be the first one to cry uncle - that’s just not standard courtship practice.

Then again, nothing about Tendou is standard anything. Between his fluorescent hair, his crazy volleyball play style, his anime boxers, and even his bizarre yet seductive licking of Jello off of a Sharpie, everything Tendou is and does seems to be purposefully to defy the norm. Oddly enough though, his iconoclastic personality ends up being one of the things Suga finds most fascinating about him.

“Suga,” says Daichi, waving a hand in front of the camera. “You still in there?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Look, the worst that can happen is that he rejects you, right?”

Suga pouts. “Yes, he can reject me. He can reject me and then he’d still be my roommate, living one bathroom away from a guy who thinks he’s hot and wants to screw him or date him or both, while he may or may not still be experiencing some kind of ambiguous gay panic, and things will get a _totally different_ kind of weird than what they already are, and his queerplatonic partner will probably quit talking to me for hurting his feelings, and then I’ll have to leave the study group and have no friends here -”

“Suga!”

“What?”

“Calm down!” Daichi holds up both hands. “Okay, I get it. Maybe not the best of ideas. Still not as complicated as my life though,” he mutters.

“What do you mean by that?”

Daichi’s cheeks color. “I, uh. Just a – one second. I _have_ been meaning to tell you about – hang on, just a second, really.” He gets up, revealing Ushijima standing a foot behind him with his own laptop and a cord. Suga watches as Daichi fusses around with the cords to plug Ushijima’s laptop in alongside his on the wall. By the time Daichi has sat back down, Suga’s had time to catch Bokuto and Kuroo in the background playing video games on Daichi’s couch, Oikawa sandwiched between them, and a _really unexpected_ brush of Daichi’s and Ushijima’s hands as the laptop charger cord is handed off.

Daichi re-seats himself. At the desk next to his, Suga hears the distinct sound of a Skype call beginning, and wonders who Ushijima is talking to. Turning back to Daichi, Suga finds that his ex-captain’s face is turning progressively redder.

“Does this thing you’ve been meaning to tell me about,” Suga says slyly, “have anything to do with _your_ romantic escapades?”

Unbelievably, Daichi’s face flushes even redder. In the background, Ushijima says something to whoever’s on _his_ Skype call,  readjusts so his own laptop is facing Daichi, and then leans back to watch the action.

“Daichi,” says Suga, folding his hands in front of himself. “You’re my best friend. I love you, I support you wholeheartedly in everything that you do, and I will not judge you no matter which of them you’re dating. Even if it’s Oikawa.”

From the sofa, Oikawa scoffs indignantly.

“About that,” says Daichi.He makes a noise that sounds like a cat getting its tail stepped on. “Um.”

“Oh my god, you _are_ dating Oikawa?”

“Not – uh, well. There are a lot of logistics to still work out, um. We haven’t all figured out everyone’s dynamics, so I don’t think _dating_ is a word any of us would be using yet-”

“Any of us,” murmurs Suga. He thinks there is no way Daichi’s got that much game, but if he does, Suga is incredulously proud of him.

“We’re still all negotiating things,” says Daichi, “But we’re kind of… in some capacity at least… all five of us are all kind of seeing each other?”

Tendou picks an uncannily well-timed moment to burst into raucous laughter in the other room. Suga leans back and lets it all sink in that somehow Sawamura Daichi has landed himself not one, but _four_ attractive boyfriends. This is unbelievable.

“I want you to know,” Suga says slowly, “that I still wholeheartedly support you, even if you _are_ maybe dating Oikawa. And Kuroo, and Bokuto, and Ushijima. And I’m both proud of you and concerned for your schedule. But I also think I need a drink.”

“You don’t drink.” Daichi rubs the back of his neck, still embarrassed somewhat but looking vastly relieved by how Suga’s taken the news.

“I might start. It’s been that kind of a week.”

“And there you have it,” says Ushijima, to whoever’s on his laptop screen. Suga wonders if whoever was on his skype call was getting the news broken to them as well.

“Does this make Sugawara our weird in-law?” yells Bokuto from the background.

“Oh my god.”

“Does this mean if we ever visit each other, we can go on a double-ish date with Suga-chan and Tendou-chan?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” repeats Suga. Over the end of his statement, he hears a startled yelp from Ushijima’s laptop… as well as from the direction of Tendou’s room.

Several things happen at once: Daichi’s head whips in the direction of Ushijima’s laptop. Oikawa covers his mouth with a giggly and entirely unapologetic “oops.” Ushijima’s face remains entirely impassive aside from one critically raised eyebrow. Suga quite possibly stops breathing.

From the other side of the bathroom doors, Suga very clearly hears the sound of a laptop slamming shut. It is immediately followed by Suga’s forehead meeting the surface of his desk.

“I’ve changed my mind,” squeaks Suga. “I _very_ _much_ need a drink.”

             

 

Twenty minutes of adrenaline and soul-rending anxiety later, Suga puts in a call to Tanaka Saeko and begs a favor off of her to please, please buy him some kind of alcohol. She cackles on the phone and agrees with very little fanfare and zero qualms; Suga finds himself mildly concerned, but mostly curious about what her high school and earlier college days must have looked like if she doesn’t mind providing drinks for minors. He gets himself more Pepsi from the vending machines in the dorms to use as a mixer, and considers that, as he’s the one begging alcohol off his underclassman’s older sister, he’s in no position to judge Saeko’s inevitably wild youth. He goes outside to wait for her and cringes when Sakeo’s massive white pickup careens into the parking lot, screeching to an unholy stop right in front of him.

Saeko exits the pickup, completely unruffled and grinning, and plants a large paper bag in Suga’s arms.

“How much is in here, oh my god,” he mumbles, peeking over the rim of the bag.

“Enough to have fun with!” Saeko laughs and claps him hard on the back. Suga wheezes.

“How much do I owe you?” he laments, attempting to fish around in his pockets. He may have not bought nearly enough Coke to mix this all with. He has no idea where he’s going to put it all.

“You’ll pay me back someday!” says Saeko. “I’ll figure out somethin’ for you to repay me with.”

And on that ominous note, she gets back in the pickup, revs the engine for dramatic effect, and bursts back out of the parking lot, leaving Suga with enough alcohol to get his entire dorm floor pleasantly buzzed.

Suga returns to his room with the bag of alcohol and the Pepsi from the vending machine. He slips out of his shoes, steels his nerves, crosses through the bathroom, and knocks on Tendou’s door. The door cracks open just enough for Tendou to peer through it, even more wide-eyed than usual and looking somewhere between “deer in the headlights” and “possessed by a demon.”

Suga holds up the bag. “I have vodka,” he says, and Tendou immediately lets the door swing open the rest of the way.

It occurs to Suga that for as many times as Tendou’s been in his own room, this is only the second time he’s been in here. Tendou’s room, contrary to the time Suga moved all his furniture around, looks far more moved-into now as Suga steps over the threshold - and nearly trips on a pile of laundry. There are posters up on the standard white dorm walls now - some volleyball, some from weird B-movies. A Shiratorizawa track jacket is draped haphazardly over the corner of the bookshelf, which is fully packed now with manga and magazines, and the top shelf is covered in anime figurines of varying sizes and genres. Mostly boys with swords and pirates and Gundam-looking things, although Suga does take note of a Kamen Rider he recognizes among the lot. Tossed almost carelessly across the half-made bed is an anime body pillow of a character that Suga thinks might be from Naruto, rendered in what’s clearly _supposed_ to be a suggestive pose but honestly isn’t.

As Suga sets the bag full of certain death-by-hangover on Tendou’s desk and starts unloading its contents, out of the corner of his eye he watches Tendou attempt to surreptitiously roll the body pillow over to preserve its nonexistent dignity.

“Do you have cups?” asks Suga. Tendou makes a noncommittal noise and shuffles around the room before showing up at his side with two mismatched coffee mugs. One of them has one of the girls from _Love Live_ on it; the other is Shiratorizawa purple and bears the slogan “GUESS THIS, MOTHERFUCKER.”

“You have your own high school team merch?” Suga gapes at the Shiratorizawa mug. “Your high school team has _custom merch_?”

“The third years got ‘em specially made before we graduated,” explains Tendou, which is the first thing he’s said aloud to Suga since he showed up. “They all say different shit on ‘em. Wakatoshi-kun’s is the funniest, it says _World’s Best Dad.”_

“Nice.”

“I was lobbying for it to say _World’s best walking ace pun,_ but Wakatoshi-kun didn’t get the joke. I think. It’s hard to tell sometimes ‘cos his face doesn’t change ever. Anyway, it got outvoted.”

“I’d have backed you up on that one,” admits Suga, who is still annoyed yet endeared by the fact that he finds Tendou’s bad puns cute. He holds out his hands, and Tendou quite carefully passes him the mugs. It doesn’t escape Suga’s notice that Tendou is careful not to let their fingers brush - and his heart clenches in his chest, just a bit. He’d expected a weird change to their already weird dynamic, but this quiet and evasive Tendou is already off-putting enough without him actively avoiding the casual touch that came so normally to his interactions with Suga before.

“What’s the correct vodka-to-Pepsi ratio?” he asks to distract himself from the hollow disappointment.

“One part alcohol to like, two parts Pepsi,” suggests Tendou. This is how much Suga pours before taste-testing it and nearly spitting it out - it tastes too bitter and too sweet and sends unpleasant shivers down the back of Suga’s neck. “That’s a guess, though,” Tendou adds with a smirk.

“Piss off with your guess monster shenanigans,” Suga mutters, and adds twice the amount of soda into their mugs. He lets Tendou have the Shiratorizawa mug and takes the _Love Live_ one for himself, and holds it out to toast… something. Who knows.

“Cheers?” he attempts.

“Cheers to what?” wonders Tendou. “What’s this about, anyway? Are you trying to apologize or something? I never took you for the sentimental type, Koushi-kun.”

“It’s been a really weird week is all,” Suga says, very much avoiding the question. “I just. Kinda need to let loose?”

“I’ll drink to that.” Tendou concedes to clink his mug against Suga’s before scrunching his nose up and chugging at least half of his drink. Suga’s almost impressed - until he starts coughing. But then the moment Tendou catches his breath he’s doing that challenging-eyebrow-quirk thing at Suga. So Suga raises his eyebrows back and downs as much of his own drink as he can handle. It still tastes foul, but he’s never been under any impression that vodka in anything is supposed to taste good. More importantly, by the time he slams his mug down on Tendou’s desk, he’s already starting to feel a little bit better about the evening.

Thirty minutes and two more mugs of vodka and Pepsi later, they’re both sprawled on Tendou’s bed and Suga is feeling impressively giggly. Tendou’s telling some ridiculous story about when he was a first year at Shiratorizawa and befriended Semi because of an incident involving an asshole upperclassman and a whole locker full of condom balloons. Suga’s head is resting on the body pillow and his legs are draped across Tendou’s. Suga can feel Tendou’s leg hair tickling the backs of his calves, which _should_ be weird. It should be weird, but it isn’t. Maybe it’s the alcohol helping things along, but Suga feels completely comfortable. Although, neither of them are really acknowledging the casual touch as Tendou laughs his way through the story.

“It was fucking hilarious, right,” he explains, gesturing wildly toward the cieling, “cos all of these fuckin’ blown-up condoms come cascading out of his locker, like. _All_ over the club room.”

“Oh my god.”

“And like. ‘Course the guy knew who did it, and he, ah. Well.” Tendou readjusts himself so he’s laying on his side, face half-hidden by the ridiculous pillow. “He beat the shit outta me, and then he beat the shit outta me again for being queer, and then Eita got their ass kicked trying to beat the shit outta him in return. It was a real party.”

Suga gapes at Tendou for a long moment, halfway because of the story itself, and halfway because Tendou’s tone of voice is completely nonchalant. Then, he sits up dizzily. “Where is he now?” he asks.

“Eita?”

“The dude. Condom locker guy.”

“What?”

“I’m gonna go have a _talk_ with him.”

“Nah, you’re not,” Tendou says, grabbing Suga by the back of his shirt and pulling him back down onto the bed. He lands much closer to Tendou than he’d been before he sat up. He thinks this is probably okay, though - instead of going to fight some Shiratorizawa graduate he doesn’t even know,a much more productive avenue for his sudden protective desire would be to shimmy his way closer and rest the tips of his fingers just above the collar of Tendou’s shirt.

And so he does. Tendou’s breath hitches just a little bit at the contact. Suga lets his hand slide forward gently to rest along the side of Tendou’s neck, and he strokes his thumb over Tendou’s skin.

Just to show he cares, or something. Comforting touch. Things like that, which are _normal_ friend things to do when you care about someone, and have _nothing_ to do with the fact that Suga is sure Tendou can hear how fast his heart is beating. Besides, Tendou’s arm is trapped underneath him now, and he can feel the heat of his skin radiating through the cotton of his shirt, and it’s _nice._

__

“It was like, two years ago, dude. Also, we _totally_ got revenge.” Tendou takes Suga by the shoulder and smirks. “Where d’you think I learned all the shit I’ve been pulling on you? I tried most of it on that asshat first.”

“Are you comparing me to your childhood bullies, Tendou?” Suga pouts.

“There’s not really a comparison to be made, cos you’re actually a mostly reasonable person underneath all that floof.” For emphasis, Tendou releases Suga’s shoulder to ruffle his hair. Suga tries to pretend it’s not making his heart hurt.

“Thanks.”

“Anyway,” finishes Tendou, “Y’know that like, one line in Harry Potter that’s like. _There’s just some things you don’t do without becoming friends because of it?_ Or whatever, when they fight the troll in the first book. Yeah. That’s me and Eita. In it to win it.”

“That’s really cute,” admits Suga, and he honestly thinks, in a weird way, that it is. Tendou blinks owlishly at him, and then smiles really wide.

“ _You’re_ really cute,” Suga mumbles without really meaning to - and Tendou freezes up completely. Then he rolls onto his back and extricates his arm from underneath Suga to press both hands to his face as he laughs uncomfortably.

Suga sits up again, uninhibited this time, and mentally curses himself, or his inebriation, or both.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Sorry, I didn’t – I wasn’t thinking, I don’t wanna freak you out, Semi-san warned me you might be having a gay crisis or something-”

It’s at about this point that he realizes Tendou is shuddering not with discomfort but with genuine laughter, and Suga turns back toward him with his lips pressed into a thin line. Tendou’s shoulders shake with his near-silent laughs. Eventually he manages to say, “Eita did _not_ tell you that. Oh my god. _Gay crisis_.”

“You’re _not_ having a gay crisis?”

“Why on earth would I be having a gay crisis?” Tendou sits up too, staring incredulously at Suga. “The only gay crisis I’m having is that I’m too gay for words.”

Suga heaves the anime body pillow in Tendou’s direction. “Like I can’t tell that, you goof.”

“Eita did _not_ tell you I was having a gay crisis,” Tendou repeats, shoving the pillow back at Suga, who dodges it with a cackle and almost falls off the bed.

“He said not to keep up the flirty pranks? I just figured-”

“Was this before or after you stripped in front of me?” he teases, yanking Suga back onto the bed and leaning in dangerously close, hands twisted in the fabric of Suga’s t-shirt, smirk so wide it could split his face. Suga feels a burst of adrenaline at the close proximity. He ignores it in favor of collapsing back into the mattress, and Tendou follows him down. This time they’re face to face, Tendou hovering over Suga with his hands braced on either side of Suga’s head - and all of a sudden they’ve both stopped laughing. Suga’s breath catches in his throat. It’s quiet enough that he can hear someone watching what might be _Game of Thrones_ next door, and it’s kind of ruining the mood.

It occurs to Suga that he might be starting to sober up, just a bit. It also occurs to him that Tendou won’t meet his eyes. Suga isn’t sure how to take that. It’s especially disconcerting because Tendou’s lips are still curling like he’s trying not to laugh.

“Tendou?” he tries. “What are you thinking about up there?”

Tendou’s Cheshire grin fights its way back onto his face. He bursts back into laughter and collapses forward to hide his head in the blankets by Suga’s neck. Suga tries very hard to ignore how close they are, how Tendou’s still braced just barely above him, how their chests nearly brush together as Tendou cackles into the sheets.

“Tendou,” Suga repeats.

Tendou wheezes with laughter. “Holy shit, our captains are _dating_.”

“Sort-of dating,” corrects Suga. “That can’t possibly be what’s still on your mind.”

“Our captains are _dating each other_ ,” he repeats, pushing himself upright again, grinning so widely, Suga can count his teeth.

“Among others,” Suga notes, grinning in return. When Tendou isn’t out to be annoying on purpose, his genuine good humor is infectious.

“I’m so proud.”

“I can’t believe it. But same.” And then, after a pause, “No, seriously. You just shoved me onto your bed and now you’re ignoring it.”

Tendou’s eyes narrow. “Well, what do you _think_ I’m thinking about.”

“Don’t screw around.”

“What are _you_ thinking about, Koushi-kun?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at guessing?” Suga teases him, reaching up to poke the tip of Tendou’s nose.

“I guessed that you were prim and proper and would easily lose your shit if I fucked with you,” says Tendou, more than a little irritated. “And then you put fucking _soup_ in my fucking _shower_.”

“All’s fair in love and war.” Suga shrugs. “Are you, um. Going to move?”

Tendou seems to remember that he’s still braced over Suga on the bed, and breaks into a sneaky grin once more. _He’s so changeable,_ thinks Suga.

“Why, am I making you uncomfortable?” Tendou teases. He leans down close enough that their noses almost touch, so that his breath tickles at Suga’s cheeks when he exhales.

“I’ll need more alcohol to properly answer that question,” mutters Suga.

“Too bad, you’re not getting up.”

“Try and stop me,” suggests Suga, placing his hands on Tendou’s shoulders in preparation to try and push him off.

“Is that a challenge?” asks Tendou - and the quirk of Suga’s eyebrows must be enough of an indication, because Tendou grabs one of Suga’s wrists to push his hand back down, properly pinning him to the mattress. But it’s not like Suga’s actually trying especially hard to resist him (although he’s certainly pretending). He’s just figured out by now how to read Tendou himself, and the easiest way to get Tendou to do something is to imply that he can’t. So Suga threatening escape of course means Tendou’s of course going to pin him down to prevent it. Suga’s quietly proud of his prediction coming true, even as Tendou pins his other wrist as well.

He didn’t, however, predict the next move: Tendou’s smirk suddenly looming closer, his nose brushing against Suga’s cheek, his lips pressing down on Suga’s own with an impulsive fervor. Suga lets out a gasp, and Tendou presses closer, chapped lips sliding over Suga’s - and it’s a full ten seconds before Suga responds and kisses back. The moment he does, Tendou freezes against him as if he’s startled. Suga nips at his lips to let him know that _no, this is good, this is good,_ then sucks Tendou’s lower lip between his teeth. Tendou whines, and his grip on Suga’s wrists loosens just enough that Suga is able to break free. He takes Tendou by the front of his shirt and rolls them over, so that Tendou is pinned to the bed by his hips and they’re pressed together chest-to chest.

Suga reaches up to thread his fingers through Tendou’s flaming hair, and tugs his head back enough that he can duck down to kiss and nip his way down Tendou’s neck. The badly-stifled whimper Tendou lets out sends shivers down Suga’s spine. When he pulls back he finds himself staring down at Tendou, flushed as bright red as his hair once again, pupils blown wide and mouth hanging just slightly open.

“Oh,” Tendou murmurs. And then he breaks into a brilliant grin, and his arms shoot up to wrap around Suga’s neck, pulling him down into a crushing embrace.

“You like me, don’t you,” Suga teases from where his face is pressed into Tendou’s collarbone.

“Shut up, Koushi-kun.” Tendou’s words sound belligerent, but he’s giggling against Suga’s shoulder, and so Suga turns his head just enough to press feather-light kisses against his neck instead. Tendou’s breath hitches, and he rolls the pair of them onto their sides. He ducks his head and buries his face in Suga’s shirt. Suga immediately reaches up to run his fingers through Tendou’s hair.

“You think I’m cute too,” Suga teases.

“I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“I hate you and you hate me and we’re gonna keep fucking with each other ‘til one of us finally loses our shit and buys a paintball gun or something and comes bursting into the other one’s room at 4 a.m. screaming  _WELCOME TO HELL_.”

“We can still do that,” Suga laughs, nuzzling the top of Tendou’s head. “But I’d rather we do it like, we keep fucking with each other til one of us finally loses our shit and pins the other up against the wall and kisses them ‘til they’re seeing stars.”

“You’re gonna make me buy a paintball gun,”Tendou mumbles - but he also snuggles closer. “I thought _I_ was embarrassing, but you’re just mushy. Ew.”

“If you’d like me to ruin the mood and knee you in the stomach-”

 “Fuck off,” Tendou says, but Suga can feel him grinning against his chest. “That sounds like fun though. The getting shoved into a wall and kissed thing. Not the kneed in the stomach thing.” Suga grins at this, and he tugs lightly at Tendou’s hair until he looks up, and then kisses him again. Tendou sighs against his lips, but then pulls back quickly. “Do you, uh. Wanna sleep over here?”

Suga laughs, startled. “That’s sudden. Just a minute ago you were insisting you hated me.”

Tendou grins sheepishly. “Yeah, well, when you went out earlier, I may or may not have wrapped your entire bed in saran wrap.”

“What.”

“Hey, I feel bad!”

“Not bad enough to not do it.”

“Bad enough to let you sleep in my bed.”

“How are we gonna fit all three of us?” Suga elbows the forgotten anime body pillow.

“Do _not_.”

In the end, though, Suga agrees. Mostly because he can’t figure out how to peel the saran wrap off his bed immediately. But either way, a few minutes after he changes into pajamas, he finds himself under Tendou’s brightly-patterned covers, Tendou himself curled up in his arms.

“You’re actually pretty affectionate, aren’t you,” murmurs Suga, cheek resting atop Tendou’s head. Tendou hums and readjusts himself to properly wrap his arms around Suga’s waist.

“And you’re a gushing romantic nerd underneath your sass, who’d have thunk it,” Tendou mumbles back.

Tendou falls asleep first. Suga thinks this is all just a little surreal, but he’s not opposed to it, not at all. Tendou’s arms feel nice wrapped around him, and this other side of him – the side that feels things besides gleeful competition – is fascinating to witness.

 _I really like him,_ Suga realizes. _Like, actually, not just in a “he’s attractive and it pisses me off” way_. _I actually_ like _him._

He thinks, tomorrow morning when they wake up, he should probably let Tendou know as much.

 

Two days later, Suga wakes in his own saran wrap-free bed to the morning sun streaming brightly through his entirely ineffectual dorm curtains. He’s not ready to face the Monday morning 8:30am lecture, but he never will be either. He sits up and stretches, eyes scrunched shut and arms extended over his head as he swings his legs off the bed and runs into something. And knocks it over. Actually, it knocks a _lot_ of things over, and Suga opens his eyes at the click of plastic on plastic and the distinct sound of water being spilled.

The entire floor of Suga’s room is lined in red solo cups, filled halfway with water, stacked in intricate and precarious displays all over the room. It’s _elaborate_ , elaborate and obnoxious and making a gigantic terrible mess as the solo cups go over like dominos at Suga’s feet.

Thank god his dorm has a wood floor instead of a carpet, at least.

“Tendou?” Suga calls. The bathroom door swings open immediately, nearly taking out several more cups. Tendou stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets and smiling beatifically.

“Yes?” he sings.

“Not over yet, I take it?”

“Oh, never.”

Despite his best intentions and the imminent mess it’s going to be cleaning this all up, Suga smiles.

“I’ll hold you to that, then,” he says, and Tendou smiles back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](natroze.tumblr.com) || twitter  
>  come yell with me


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